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ABSTRACT
The article examines Leo Strauss’s controversial and enigmatic Thoughts on Machiavelli against the backdrop of his biography. In order to understand the Thoughts on Machiavelli, it is necessary to reconstruct Strauss’s intellectual development since the 1920s. The analysis then focuses on two main questions in Strauss’s writings: is it possible to get a full understanding of “exile” in the context of the Jewish and the Western tradition and what does “Radical Enlightenment” mean exactly? Both concepts - “Exile” and “Radical Enlightenment” - need to be analyzed, according to Strauss, in an “exoteric” and an “esoteric” way. The conclusion of the article offers a traditional answer to Strauss’s challenge: Athens and Jerusalem are not separate, as Strauss suggests.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli. For an edition published in 1969 by the Washington University Press Strauss made a few corrections and changes. Interestingly enough, even the Straussians do not quote the later edition! – The most elaborated critique of Strauss’s Machiavelli interpretation can be found in McCormick, Reading Machiavelli. For a subtle defense of Strauss’s reading of Machiavelli see Zuckert, Machiavelli’s Politics. – And for the most recent secondary literature on Strauss see Meyer, “Zu neuerer Literatur.”
2 Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, XIX.
3 Strauss, “Letter to Gerhard Krüger,”80.
4 Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?, 46.
5 Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 173.
6 Jay, The Virtues of Mendacity, 4.
7 Cf. Muller, “Leo Strauss.”
8 Strauss, “The Testament of Spinoza,” 220–221.
9 Maimonides, “Letter on Astrology,” 465.
10 Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed.
11 Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing.
12 For more details see the forthcoming intellectual biography on Strauss by the author of this article.
13 Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes.
14 Strauss, The City and Man.
15 Strauss, Natural Right and History.
16 Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?
17 Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern.
18 Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 183.
19 Ibid., 30.
20 One can find strong arguments for this reading in Heinrich Meier’s works. Cf. especially Meier, Politische Philosophie; Meier, Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?; Meier, Nietzsches Vermächtnis.
21 Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 59.
22 Ibid., 329–330.
23 Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age.
24 Strauss had the habit of documenting every book section and all of his essays throughout the writing process.
25 Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment; Israel, Democratic Enlightenment.
26 Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion; Strauss, Philosophy and Law.
27 Katz, Tradition and Crisis.
28 Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli; Strauss, The City and Man.
29 Several versions of this list can be found in Leo Strauss’s papers at the Special Collection, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago. See the next footnote.
30 The only project Strauss and his group of disciples finished was Storing, Scientific Study of Politics.
31 The by far most important criticism can be found in Schaar, “Review.”
32 The book includes an autobiographical English preface and a translation of Strauss’s 1932 German essay on Carl Schmitt.
33 Scholem, “Letter to Leo Strauss,” 747.
34 Strauss, The Argument and the Action; Strauss, Xenophon’s Socrates.
35 Ibid., 179.
36 Strauss discussed the question about whether “patriotism is enough” before and came to the conclusion: “patriotism is not enough,” this time without quotation marks (cf. Strauss, “What is Political Philosophy?,” 364). The essay was reprinted with slight changes in Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy?, 35. However, in Xenophon’s Socrates the context is entirely different due to the reference to the times and circumstances that allow for a decision against the fatherland. Strauss was not quoting himself; rather, his quotation marks allude to a historical reminiscence.
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Thomas Meyer
Thomas Meyer studied Philosophy, Modern German Literature, and Classics in Munich. He obtained his doctorate at LMU, Munich, in 2003 and completed his Habilitation at LMU in 2009. He received fellowships from and held guest and visiting professorships at the Max-Weber-Kolleg, Erfurt, Karl Franzens University Graz, ETH Zurich, University of Chicago, Vanderbilt University Nashville, Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, and Boston University. He has published and edited several books on Jewish philosophy and theology, and is now finishing an intellectual biography on Hannah Arendt.